Abia’s local, foreign debt now over N200 b, owes N50 b in salaries – Otti
By Stephen Ukandu, Umuahia
Abia’s newly- inaugurated Governor, Dr Alex Otti, revealed that the state is owing over N200 billion as foreign and domestic loans, while salary arrears stands at over N50 billion.
Otti who made the revelation during his inaugural speech Monday at the Umuahia Township Stadium, lamented that the task before him is very challenging.
“I must be frank to inform you that we have a very difficult and challenging road ahead of us. Abia State is starting, not from zero, but from an enormously negative position.
“While we were busy battling with the devastating effects of insincere and corrupt leadership, the rest of the world, and even many parts of Nigeria, would appear to have left us behind.”
“We have a treasury that has been criminally ravaged to the extent that we have an alleged N50 billion in unpaid salaries, gratuities, and pensions. Our local and foreign debt overhang is reported to be in the region of N200 billion, in addition to other debts to contractors.
“We have a poorly motivated workforce, extreme youth unemployment, collapsed physical infrastructure, a terribly frail primary, secondary and tertiary healthcare delivery system.
“These are in addition to a broken educational system, urban waste disposal crisis and a large army of citizens, especially teachers, health workers, including medical doctors and nurses, lecturers in tertiary institutions, Local Government Authority workers and most painfully, our senior citizens, who feel blatantly betrayed by successive administrations that wilfully and unconscionably abandoned them to live in wretched sub-human conditions.”
Otti said he had come to change the narrative, solicited the assistance of all Abians to refix the state.
